The Logic of Hunger Striking Palestinians: When Starvation Is a Weapon
26 February 2016By Ramzy Baroud
By Friday, January 29, Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeq had spent
66-days on hunger strike in Israeli jails. Just before he fell into his third
coma, a day earlier, he sent a public message through his lawyers, the gist of
which was: freedom or death.
Al-Qeq is 33-years of age, married and a father of two. Photos circulating of
him online and on Palestinian streets show the face of a bespectacled,
handsome man. The reality though is quite different. ''He's in a very bad
situation. He fell into his third coma in recent days, and his weight has
dropped to 30 kilograms (66 pounds),'' Ashraf Abu Sneina, one of al-Qeq's
attorneys, told Al Jazeera. Al-Qeq was arrested under yet another notorious
Israeli law called the ‘administrative detention' law.
Ominous predictions of al-Qeq's imminent death have been looming for days with
no end in sight to his elongated ordeal. Unfortunately for a man who believes
that the only tool of defense and protest he has against apartheid Israel is
his body, the Red Cross and other international groups took many days to so
much as acknowledge the case of this news reporter who had refused food and
medical treatment since November 24, 2015.
Al-Qeq, works for Saudi Arabia's Almajd TV network and was arrested at his
home in Ramallah on November 21st. In its statement, issued more than 60 days
after he entered into his hunger strike, ICRC described the situation as
‘critical', unequivocally stating the reality of Al-Qeq's ''life being at
risk.'' On January 27, the European Union also expressed its view of being
''especially concerned'' about al-Qeq's deteriorating health.
Under the ‘administrative detention' law, Israel has affectively held
Palestinians and Arab prisoners without offering reasons for their arrests,
practically since the state was founded in 1948. In fact, it is argued that
this law which is principally founded on ‘secret evidence' dates back to the
British Mandate government's Emergency Regulations.
After Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967, it
clutched at straw in its desperate efforts to find whatever legal
justifications it could for holding prisoners without trials. These efforts
were eventually articulated in the Israeli Law on Authorities in State of
Emergency in 1979.
This law was some sort of compromise between the internal intelligence (Shin
Bet), the state and the court system, with the ultimate aim of providing the
façade and apparent backing of a legal cover for what is considered in
international law and most country laws as illegal. The Shin Bet was thus
allowed to use whatever coercive measures – including physical and
psychological torture – to exact ‘forced' confessions from Palestinian
prisoners over the course of six months, renewable by a court order without
trial or charges.
Khader Adnan, 37, from Jenin, was held under administrative detention law for
years. Israeli intelligence had no evidence to indict him of any particular
charge, despite accusations that he was a valued member of the Islamic Jihad
organization. He was set free on July 12, 2015.This occurred only after he too
resorted to undergoing several hunger strikes, and two particularly long ones:
early in 2012 a hunger strike lasted for 66 days, and another, in May 2015,
lasted for 56 days.
Each time, Adnan reached the point where death, as is the case for al-Qeq, was
also becoming a real possibility. When we asked him what compelled him to
follow that dangerous path twice, his answer was immediate: ''repeated arrests,
the savagery of the way I was arrested, the brutality of the interrogation and
finally the prolonged administrative detention''- without trial.
Administrative detentions are like legal black holes. They offer no escape
routes and no rights for the prisoner whatsoever, but wins the interrogators
time to break the spirit of the prisoner, forcing him or her to surrender or
even admit, under torture, to things that he or she never committed in the
first place. ''It is our last and only choice,'' says Mohammed Allan, 33, from
Nablus, who underwent a hunger strike for so long that it resulted in brain
damage, and nearly cost him his life.
''When you feel that all the doors are sealed, and you stand there humiliated
and alone, knowing in advance that the court system is a charade, one is left
with no other option but a hunger strike,'' he says.
''First, I made my intentions clear by refusing three meals in a row, and by
sending a written note through the Dover (Hebrew for a prisoner who serves as
a spokesperson for a prison ward).'' Then, the punishment commences. It is like
a psychological warfare between the prison authorities, state and legal system
apparatuses against a single individual,'' which, according to Allan lasts for
50-60 days.
''Almost instantly, a hunger striker is thrown into solitary confinement,
denied access to a mattress and blanket and other basic necessities. Only
after six weeks or so, do Israeli prison authorities agree to talk to lawyers
representing hunger strikers to discuss various proposals. But within that
period of time, the prisoner is left entirely unaided, separated from the
other prisoners and subjected to an uninterrupted campaign of intimidation and
threats. Mental torture is far worse than hunger,'' says Allan.
''You cannot even go to the bathroom anymore; you cannot stand on your own; you
are even two weak to wipe the vomit that involuntarily gushes out of your
mouth into your beard and chest.''
Allan almost died in prison, and despite a court order that permitted prison
authorities to force-feed him (a practice seen internationally as a form of
torture), doctors at Soroka hospital refused to act upon the instructions. In
mid-August 2015, Allan was placed on life support when he lost consciousness.
His severe malnutrition resulted in brain damage.
A third freed hunger striker, Ayman Sharawneh, originally from Dura, Hebron,
but who has been deported to Gaza, describes hunger strikes as the ''last
bullet'' in a fight for freedom that could possibly end in death. Sharawneh,
like Adnan and others we talked to, was bitter about the lack of adequate
support he received while dying in jail.
''All organizations, Palestinian or international, usually fall short,'' he
says. ''They spring into action after the prisoner had gone through many days
of torture.''
He says that 2 years and 8 months after he was deported to Gaza, he is
experiencing severe pain throughout his body, particularly in his kidneys.
While undergoing the extended hunger strike ''I started to lose my hair,
suffered from constant nausea, sharp pain in my guts, threw up yellow liquid,
then dark liquid, then I could hardly see anything. I had an excruciating
headache and then I began to suffer from fissures all over my skin and body.''
He agrees with Adnan that ‘individual hunger strikes' should not be understood
as a self-centered act. ''Mohammed Al-Qeq is not striking for himself,'' says
Adnan. ''He is striking on behalf of all political prisoners,'' whose number is
estimated by prisoners' rights groupAddameer at nearly 7,000.
According to Adnan, the issue of hunger strikes should not be seen as a battle
within Israeli jails, but as part and parcel of the Palestinian people's fight
against military occupation.
While the three prisoners affirmed their solidarity with Al-Qeq, they called
for a much greater support for the hunger-striking journalist and thousands
like him, many of whom are held indefinitely under administrative detentions.
The list of well-known Palestinian hunger strikers exceeds Al-Qeq, Adnan,
Allan and Sharawneh and includes many others, not forgetting Samir Issawi,
Hana Shalabi, Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Thiab. But what all of these former
hunger strikers seem to have in common is their insistence that their battles
were never concerned with the freedom of individuals only, but of an entire
group of desperate, oppressed and outraged people.
(With reporting by Yousef Aljamal)
– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20
years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an
author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books
include ‘Searching Jenin', ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada' and his latest
‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story'. Visit his website:
www.ramzybaroud.net.
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